Via ClimateProgress: The New York Times Asks “Where Did Global Warming Go?” While Ignoring Its Own Failed Coverage

The one-time “paper of record” cut coverage sharply since its peak in 2006 and 2007 and failed to connect the dots — heck, a headline this weekeven blamed the recent record-setting Thailand floods on Thai “officials” not “an unusually heavy monsoon season”!

Yet the paper never mentions the collapsing media coverage in the Elisabeth Rosenthal article that takes up nearly the entire front page of the Sunday Review asking (subhed in print edition):

Across the nation, too, belief in man-made global warming, and passion about doing something to arrest climate change, is not what it was five years or so ago, when Al Gore’s movie had buzz and Elizabeth Kolbert’s book about climate change, “Field Notes From a Catastrophe,” was a best seller.

So media coverage collapses and public concern for the issue drops a bit. Go figure!
But the ace investigative reporting team at the Times doesn’t seem to believe the sharp drop in media coverage merits even a single sentence in a piece on why the issue of climate change has faded somewhat.Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, whom the NYT itself quoted in 2009 as “an expert on environmental communications,” emailed me:

A major factor not mentioned in this article is the collapse of any significant coverage climate change in the media. We know that 2010 was a record low year, and 2011 will probably look much the same. If the media doesn’t draw attention to the issue, public opinion will decline. The media effects literature clearly shows that the public takes cues on concern over issues from the levels of coverage in the press. So perhaps an interview with the editors of the NY Times and why coverage of climate change is declining and is having its predictable effect on public opinion on this issue.

There are a number of flaws and ironies in the story. Rosenthal writes:

This fading of global warming from the political agenda is a mostly American phenomenon. True, public enthusiasm for legislation to tackle climate change has flagged somewhat throughout the developed world since the recession of 2008.

Buffeted by two years of treacherous weather that they are less able to handle than richer nations — from floods in India to water shortages in China — developing countries are feeling vulnerable. Scientists agree that extreme weather events will be more severe and frequent on a warming planet, and insurance companies have already documented an increase.

The United States is the “one significant outlier” on responding to climate change, according to a recent global research report produced by HSBC, the London-based bank. John Ashton, Britain’s special representative for climate change, said in an interview that “in the U.K., in Europe, in most places I travel to” — but not in the United States — “the starting point for conversation is that this is real, there are clear and present dangers, so let’s get a move on and respond.” After watching the Republican candidates express skepticism about global warming in early September, former President Bill Clinton put it more bluntly, “I mean, it makes us — we look like a joke, right?”
Americans — who produce twice the emissions per capita that Europeans do — are in many ways wired to be holdouts. We prefer bigger cars and bigger homes. We value personal freedom, are suspicious of scientists, and tend to distrust the kind of sweeping government intervention required to confront rising greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate change presents numerous ideological challenges to our culture and our beliefs,” Professor Hoffman of the Erb Institute says. “People say, ‘Wait a second, this is really going to affect how we live!’ ”

So we’re an outlier, but its our “culture and our beliefs” — not our lousy media coverage or the most well-financed disinformation campaign in history. Indeed, that latter point also gets no mention whatsoever. The article merely notes:

There are, of course, other factors that hardened resistance: America’s powerful fossil-fuel industry, whose profits are bound to be affected by any greater control of carbon emissions….

It also includes lack of prominence.
On New Year’s Eve, The Politico published “the largest lead headlines of The New York Times, 2010.” It ain’t pretty. I won’t repost them here, but just summarize:

There is not a single climate story on the list and only one on energy.

Brulle wrote me at the time:

Apparently, the editorial board of the NY Times has yet to fully grasp the importance of global climate change to our collective survival. As the science becomes stronger and more dire, the editors of the NY Times bury their head deeper into the sand.

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About Me

Daniel Clark Orey, Ph.D. is Professor
Emeritus of Mathematics and Multicultural Education at California State
University, Sacramento where he served from 1987 to January 2011. At the same
university, he was an instructor in the Department of Learning Skills
(Department of Learning Skills) and served as a faculty member in the doctoral
program in Educational Leadership (Educational Leadership). As Coordinator and
Principal Investigator of Algorithm Collection Project, Dr. Orey is interested
in studying the various ways in which newly arrived immigrants in California
communities, think, reason and calculate mathematically. Dr. Orey graduated
from Oregon State University in 1978 and began teaching at Monitor Elementary
School in Mount Angel, Oregon. Later, he also taught mathematics at the
following schools: Riverdale School in Portland, Oregon, the American School of
Guatemala in Guatemala City and at the Escuela Americana de Bananera,
Guatemala. Dr. Orey earned his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction in
Multicultural Education at the University of New Mexico in 1988. Both his
masters and doctoral research studies were funded by Mellon-Tinker Foundation
grants. During his doctoral research, Dr. Orey served as a consultant at the
Colegio Americano de Puebla and for Apple de Mexico. His masters work took him
to Patzun, Chimaltenango in Guatemala where he did field research with
computers and Mayan children. In 1992, Dr. Orey had an important role in
founding the Sociedade Internacional para Estudos da Criança with the late Prof. Ruy Krebbs, where he served
as general secretary for several terms. In the period 1995 to 1998, Dr. Orey
was the director of Professional Development and the Center for Teaching and
Learning at California State University, Sacramento. In 1998, at the invitation
of Professor Ubiratan D'Ambrosio, Dr. Orey served as a Fulbright Scholar at the
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas in Brasil, which he conducted
research in classrooms and taught courses in ethnomathematics and mathematical
modeling. During the 2005-2006 school year, Dr. Orey served as visiting
professor and researcher, sponsored by CNPq in the area of mathematics
education, ethnomathematics at the Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto. In 2007,
Dr. Orey served as Senior Fulbright Specialist in Kathmandu University, Nepal,
giving lectures on topics related to mathematics education and teaching on
Ethnomathematics and modeling. Dr. Orey has published numerous books, articles
and book chapters in several languages. He also taught workshops and courses,
conducted oral presentations, and lectured in several countries. Dr. Orey
speaks and writes fluently in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

He is currently professor of mathematics
education in the Centro de Educação Aberta e a Distância Universidade Federal
de Ouro Preto, Brasil.